Surviving The Fireball

January 14, 2012|By KATHY OGDEN, Special to the Courant, The Hartford Courant

PORTLAND — —

Fire Lt. Todd Ghent credits instinct with saving his life as a propane cloud he unintentionally walked into erupted in flames.

As the orange fireball enveloped him last January, without thinking he held his breath. This kept the burning gas, which ignites in the air at nearly 1,000 degrees, out of his lungs.

"They said it would have cooked my lungs," Ghent recalled in an interview last week in his dining room, which was still decorated for Christmas.

The flames left him with second- and third-degree burns on his head, face and neck, though.

Ghent said it would take a whole day and night to convey all the thoughts that ran through his mind in the moments he was engulfed. He thought particularly about his wife, Renee, and teenage daughter, Amanda, a sophomore at Portland High School, he said.

"I remember it all," he said.

Ghent had been among the firefighters who responded to the scene of a leaking underground propane tank last Jan. 29. A 30-year volunteer with the Portland Fire Department, he was supposed to be in Vermont that weekend, skiing with his wife and daughter but 20 inches of snow had fallen in Connecticut so he decided to stay home and work clearing roofs and plowing snow.

He was with fellow town firefighter Tom Revicki when they heard the call for a gas leak at a duplex on Summer Street. They were the first on the scene and could smell gas. Putting on protective gear, they began to evacuate people from the area. As other firefighters arrived, Ghent and firefighter Tim Goff started moving down the snow-lined driveway with a gas detection meter that measures how much of the invisible gas is in the air. Suddenly, the meter reading spiked and they turned to leave, but it was too late.

Propane, which is heavier than air, had pooled between the 4-foot-high snow banks in the driveway and something caused it to ignite.

"And then it was nothing but fire," Ghent said. " I didn't know which way was out."

Ghent fell on the icy driveway but still managed to hold his breath. With his head on fire, he regained his footing and made his way to safety and dove into a snow bank to put out the flames.

Goff, who was about eight feet from Ghent, suffered burns to his hands.

"He held his breathe long enough to get out of that environment," Portland Fire Chief Robert Shea said. "[If he hadn't], it would have been a funeral. The air was on fire."

The leak, according to Portland Fire Marshal Ray Sajdak, was caused by a backhoe, but the source of the spark that ignited the gas remains unknown.

Alan Zygmunt, public education coordinator for the Connecticut Fire Academy in Windsor Locks, said firefighters are trained in handling hazardous-material environments.

Ghent and the other firefighters had received "hazmat" training, but he said each incident presents its own challenges.

"We're trained to think out of the box," Ghent said

Though there's no rule that directs firefighters to hold their breath when engulfed in a fireball, Zygmunt said they learn about super-heated air present when a fire goes into a "flashover," during which temperatures rapidly increase to 1,000 degrees or more and all combustible material present ignites.

"No one can survive that because they can't breathe," Zygmunt said.

Portland First Selectwoman Susan Bransfield said preparation is the key to surviving these kinds of situations.

"His training kicked in," she said. "He didn't breathe in. If he had, he would have breathed fire."

Ghent rode in the ambulance to Hartford Hospital with his brother, fire Capt. Tom Ghent. He was later flown by helicopter to the Connecticut Burn Center in Bridgeport, where he stayed for three days.

He lost 13 pounds in the first 36 hours after the accident.

After that, he was housebound for three weeks, but had the green light from his doctors to eat whatever he wanted to help his body recover.

Each day, keeping his skin clean was his very painful task.

Three months after the accident, Ghent resumed work. He has since left his job at Tilcon Connecticut Inc., but still owns a tree-removal business in Portland. A 1982 graduate of Portland High, he has no plans to give up his career as a volunteer firefighter in the town he was raised in.

Despite the obvious danger, his daughter Amanda does not worry about him.